MANILA: Villagers in the central Philippines fled coastal homes and sparked panic-buying in grocery stores and gas stations as an approaching powerful storm brought back nightmares of last year’s deadly onslaught from Typhoon Haiyan.

Government forecasters said Typhoon Hagupit was packing sustained winds of 205 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 240 kph over the Pacific, about 700 kilometers off the country’s eastern coast. It may hit Eastern Samar province on Saturday and barrel inland along the same route where Haiyan leveled villages and left more than 7,300 dead and missing in November last year.

Haiyan survivor Emily Sagales said many of her still-edgy neighbors in central Tacloban city, which was ravaged by Haiyan, packed their clothes and fled to a sports stadium and safer homes of relatives. Long lines formed at grocery stores and gas stations as residents stocked up on basic goods, she said.

“The trauma has returned,” the 23-year-old Sagales said. In the wake of last year’s typhoon, which killed her mother-in-law and washed away her home, she gave birth to her first child, a baby girl, in a crowded makeshift clinic filled with the injured and the dying near the Tacloban airport. “It’s worse now because I didn’t have a baby to worry about last year,” she said.

Haiyan demolished about 1 million houses and displaced about 4 million people in the central Philippines. Hundreds of residents still living in tents in Tacloban have been prioritized in an ongoing evacuation.

Hotels in Tacloban, a city of more than 200,000 people still struggling to recover from last year’s massive damage, were running out of rooms as wealthier families booked ahead for the weekend.